


Life After Death

by LaMaupin



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:19:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4621623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaMaupin/pseuds/LaMaupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emily knew it was a bad idea. Right from the beginning she had known that there was no way this ended well for either of them. Sleeping with your all but married best friend rarely did, but then again, officially speaking she was dead, so did it really matter?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life After Death

Emily knew it was a bad idea. Right from the beginning she had known that there was no way this ended well for either of them. Sleeping with your all but married best friend rarely did, but then again, officially speaking she was dead, so did it really matter?

In fairness to herself she hadn’t started it. It had been JJ who initiated, kissing her in the middle of the crappy little apartment that was her safe house in Paris. JJ had insisted on showing her to the door, even though she wasn’t even supposed to know the address. In fairness to JJ, Emily hadn’t stopped her.  

Before her death she might have been able to stop herself. To think about it rationally and put away her feelings for her friend in a nice little box in her head. It had worked before. But now all she had to do was remember the feeling of dying in her partner’s arms and all her carefully crafted defenses crumbled. Years of CIA and INTERPOL training down the drain in the face of what sometimes felt like a bad dream and other times felt like it was still happening. 

She wanted to blame it on how lonely and isolated she was, living the life of a dead woman in a city that had never been kind to her. She wanted to say that it was a one time thing, borne of a desperate need to remember that she hadn’t actually died in that warehouse. But here she was again, waking up to the early morning light filtering through thin curtains with JJ’s solid weight warm against her. 

“What’s got you looking so morose this early in the morning?” JJ’s voice startled her out of her reverie.

“Hmm?” Emily looked at the woman nestled against her in the slightly too small bed. “Oh, nothing.” JJ was giving her an expectant look that told her deflection would be useless, but she had to try anyways. It was in her nature after all. 

JJ just kept looking at her in that way of hers that told Emily that she wasn’t going to let it go so she might as well just get it over with. She sighed, trying to organize her thoughts into something coherent and settled on the thing that had been nagging at her since this whole thing began.

“Why now?” She let it hang between them, but JJ’s expectant look stayed in place, demanding context. “It’s just…we had so many chances to do this before, so why now?” 

Before what she wasn’t quite sure. Certainly before she had become another face on the wall of fallen agents. Before Will and Henry had come along, bringing a domesticity to JJ’s life that Emily was sure she couldn’t provide. Before she had walled herself off, determined to forget that there might have ever been something more than friendship between them.

Now it was JJ’s turn to deflect. “You know why…It was too complicated before, the consequences if we were found out, the risk to the team…” She could have laughed at the irony, if she didn’t have a brand burned into her chest and a jagged scar running the length of her abdomen to remind her of the price of her secrets.

“And it’s less complicated now? Now that you’re risking your family and I’m risking my life?” It came out harsher than she intended, but she didn’t have the energy to pretend not to be offended by the obvious lie.

JJ sighed, rolling away from her and staring resolutely at the ceiling. After a long moment she began to speak, her voice thick but determined.

“You were in surgery for almost six hours, and the entire time I was so sure you were dead and I would never get to see you again. It made me realize that I didn’t want to be in a world that you weren’t a part of… And then by some miracle you survived, and I promised myself that if we ever got a second chance I wouldn’t waste it.” Emily could see she was blinking back tears as she spoke, fighting to keep her composure.

“Is that what this is?” Emily asked quietly, almost afraid to know the answer “Our second chance?” 

JJ turned to face her again, eyes bright with something she couldn’t quite identify. “Only if you want it to be.”

She pulled JJ closer, as if holding her as tightly as her still somewhat limited range of motion would allow was an answer in itself, although they both knew that it wasn’t. Because Emily wasn’t sure what she wanted this to be, but she was fairly certain it wasn’t a second chance.

* * *

 

Emily awoke to a pounding on her door. She ran through the very short checklist of possible 4 am callers as she grabbed her gun out of the nightstand, trying to quell her rising panic. JJ wasn’t due back in town for another three weeks and no one else knew she was here, and while she tried to tell herself that there was no way Doyle had found her, he thought she was dead too after all, it wasn’t working.

The knocking came again, more hesitant this time, and she steeled herself to check the peephole. When she saw who it was she quickly put the gun down and opened the door. A very disheveled JJ stood in the doorway, looking so lost and scared that Emily’s heart broke for her. 

She didn’t ask what happened, she just held JJ as she cried, pulling her down onto the couch and coaxing her to bed once she started to fall asleep where they sat. 

It was only later that morning once they had woken up holding each other against the pain of the night that JJ told her what had happened. In a halting voice she told her about a double agent and an IED and losing a baby she had very much wanted, and Emily got the sense that this was the first time she had said it out loud, the first time it had all been real, and her heart broke all over again.

Emily pulled her closer, offering whatever comfort she could, feeling like she was intruding on emotional intimacy that didn’t belong to her. She wasn’t supposed to be the person JJ came to with her grief and pain and fear, and yet here they were, and she was terrified by just how loved it made her feel. 

* * *

The only part of her life in Paris that she enjoyed was the thought of just how much it would gall her mother to know that she was living in a crappy apartment and working retail just to have something to do. Even in death she continued to disappoint her mother, which amused her to no end, albeit in a sad sort of way. 

She thought about her mother a lot these days. About whether she had cried at her funeral and if she had already put whatever grief she might have felt away in the interest of whatever politics were on the agenda for this week. 

She knew she wasn’t being fair to her mother, who now had lost both her husband and her only child, but she had never quite been able to get over the bitterness borne of a lonely, isolated childhood full of unfulfilled expectations. Some scars ran too deep.

She had almost asked JJ whether her mother had been read in, because she had security clearance after all, and Paris had always been more Elizabeth’s city than Emily’s. But JJ had looked so serene that night, so at peace asleep in her bed that it pushed all thought of the Ambassador away. After all, she rarely thought about her mother when she was happy.

The next morning JJ told her that she was going back to the Bureau. Emily knew it had to end eventually, but she would miss their time together, rare as it was, because she was pretty sure it was the only thing keeping her sane. But at least this way it was a clean break; simple. They could go back to their lives and pretend that nothing had ever happened; that Paris had only been a dream.

* * *

Emily was just starting to settle into the reality that this was who she was now when the call came and she was brought back to life. She had thought she would be excited to be going home but in reality she was terrified. How could they possibly forgive her? They talked a lot about being a family, but to her family was a fragile thing that once broken could never be repaired. 

When she walked into the conference room that first time she was painfully aware of just how naive she had been to ever think that things could have gone back to the way they were. From the looks on their faces she could tell that things would never be the same. How could they be? She had betrayed them and she had abandoned them and then she hadn’t even had the good grace to stay dead. Once again her secrets had cost her what she valued most.

* * *

She had been back for three weeks the first time JJ showed up at her door. She was surprised. Paris was starting to feel like a dream and whatever this was between them was far too real now that they were both back at the BAU. She hadn’t even dared to think that maybe this was more than whatever the government staged your death equivalent of a summer fling was. 

But it was 2 am and JJ was at her door and she had no intention of stopping this. It wasn’t until she woke up alone that the reality of what they were doing hit her. She had never though of herself as a home wrecker before. Rationally she knew that there was little difference between what they had done in Paris and what they were doing now, but this was the first time it made her feel dirty, like she was doing something wrong. 

But a part of her that she was ashamed to even admit existed was glad that JJ had finally chosen her. For years, Emily had given her every opportunity but every time JJ had run away, until now.

With every stolen moment they had together, whenever JJ could spare a couple of the precious few hours they weren’t at work, it got harder for Emily to pretend that this didn’t mean anything to her, to pretend that she hadn’t fallen in love with JJ a long time ago. JJ had torn through her defenses, the walls that a lifetime of protecting herself had built, and left her exposed for all the world to see. Or at least that’s how it felt. 

She was surprised no one else could see it, the way that her entire being aligned to JJ’s presence, the way that they were a little too formal at work, over compensating by never getting too close, the way they studiously ignored the charge between them, never quite able to recapture the effortless affection they had had. 

But they did see, they just thought it was the shock of being brought back to life. Even Hotch, who was so attuned to his team it was scary sometimes, thought she needed to talk about her trauma and the adjustment of coming back to work. 

In a way he was right, she did need to talk about it. But JJ had always been the person she turned to for emotional support, and she didn’t seem to have any answers about what it was they were doing either.

* * *

“What is this?” she asked, watching JJ get dressed, readying herself to face her not quite husband and son like nothing was going on.

What she really wanted to know was if this was just a a passing fancy for JJ. One last fling before she settled down, a temporary escape from a boring relationship with the guy she was going to marry. A part of her hoped it was, because that would be easier. She would have no reason to actually deal with her feelings and when it ended it would just be another secret to keep.

JJ stopped, her shirt half buttoned, annoyance flashing across her face.

“Do we have to have this conversation now?” In another lifetime Emily would have called her on answering a question with a question, but she didn’t feel like beating around the bush tonight.

“When else are we going to have it? It’s been four months JJ, and that’s not counting Paris. I know why I’m doing this, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why you are.” 

She was doing it because in many ways being back at the BAU felt just as isolating as Paris had. No one trusted her, not really, not anymore. Her unshakable confidence that she was where she was meant to be was gone. And loving JJ, giving her everything she had and everything she was, made it all okay, even if it was only for a couple of hours. There was a crack in her foundation that JJ filled, and that made it worth the risk, even if it couldn’t possibly last.

JJ sat down on the bed, running her hands through her already messy hair. 

“What do you want me to say Emily? That this is a mistake and that I never want it to happen again? Because we both know that’s not true,” she said after a long moment. “I want to be with you, and I’m not going anywhere, if that’s what you’re so afraid of.”

She finally turned to look at Emily, her eyes fierce, and Emily knew that JJ loved her as much as she loved JJ, a thought that terrified her because JJ deserved so much better. 

She wanted to be brave and selfless and tell JJ to stop being stupid. To stop risking the loss of her family for someone as fundamentally broken as she was. But she wasn’t strong enough for that tonight.

“Don’t go.” She was ashamed of how much like pleading it sounded. She hated how vulnerable it made her feel, but she desperately missed waking up next to JJ. From how sad JJ looked when she said it, she knew JJ missed it too.

“I can’t, Will’s expecting me home. I’m sorry.” The look in her eyes said that if Emily asked again she would stay, forgoing responsibility for a night.

Emily stopped herself from saying anything else as JJ finished dressing and left. She sat in bed for a long time after, trying to convince herself that it was for the best.

* * *

It was Rossi who figured her out. She really shouldn’t have been so surprised. He had always understood her better than the others, and he was always supportive in his own quiet way. 

He gave her a searching look as he sat down opposite her on the darkened plane. Everyone else was sleeping or reading or doing whatever it was they did to decompress after a case. She had been studiously looking out the window, trying to figure out why she felt so compelled to keep coming back to this job, with all it’s horrors.

“Something’s bothering you,” he said when she looked up. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Hotch already gave me the no one expects you bounce back right away after being dead speech,” she replied, hoping that it was enough, but knowing that it wouldn’t be. “I’m fine, really.”

“I don’t think it’s about that. I think that something else is bothering you, and has been since shortly after you got back, but what do I know?” he shrugged, picking up on her desire to talk about anything else but what was really eating at her. “But if you do ever want to talk about it, my door’s always open.”

“I know. Thanks,” she said quietly. And she did. She appreciated the way that he made his support known without forcing her to talk about it, because she wasn’t ready for that yet. For now, she could still pretend that everything was okay, but sooner or later, she knew, she wouldn’t be able to keep pretending.

Rossi seemed to accept that, pulling out a book and settling in for the rest of the flight. She went back to staring out the window into the dark, wondering just when it was that she had gotten so good at keeping secrets. 

* * *

It was three weeks before she took Rossi up on his offer. Three weeks in which she decided to actually try to let herself be happy with JJ. 

JJ had made it abundantly clear that the ball was in Emily’s court. She had all but said outright that she was in it for the long haul if Emily wanted her to be. The problem was that Emily had no idea if she wanted to be. She loved JJ more than she had ever loved anyone, in a way that had grounded her even when they had been half a world apart.  And maybe that was the problem, because she wasn’t totally convinced she was capable of love like that. But she had to try, for JJ’s sake if nothing else. She didn’t know if she could forgive herself if she walked away without every actually giving it a chance, even if she knew it wouldn’t work.

She really had tried. She allowed herself to stop brooding about past traumas and eventual heartbreaks and just enjoyed it. It was nice.

And then Will had taken Henry to New Orleans, and JJ had spent three consecutive nights in Emily’s bed. At first it had only strengthened Emily’s resolve to let herself be happy for once in her life. 

Once she let herself relax she found herself enjoying it more than she had thought possible. Going on what felt like real dates with JJ and waking up with their bodies pressed together made her remember that love didn’t have to be locked away and painful. 

Watching JJ sleep, looking more serene than Emily had ever seen her, it was easy for her to think that maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all. She could get used to waking up next to JJ. How easy it would be for them to build a life together, make a little family all their own, just her and JJ and Henry in a house on a cul de sac.

It was two days later that it finally hit her that she was planning for a future that wasn’t hers, a thought that paralyzed her, although she couldn’t tell if it was from hope or fear.

She had never actually expected it to get this far. She had expected JJ to run back to Will as soon as things got too real, like she had every other time things almost got serious between them. She hadn’t planned for this, and she was terrified by the possibility that it could actually happen. 

And so she found herself walking into Rossi’s office one night after most everyone else had left. 

He didn’t look up from the file he was reviewing until she sat down.

“I’m sleeping with JJ,” she said without any preamble. He closed the file then, and she was thankful that there wasn’t any judgement in his eyes, just an invitation to continue.

“It started in Paris, and I never thought it would continue, but it’s still happening, and I don’t know how to stop, or even if I want to stop.” She said it all in a rush, as if purging herself of the information. 

Rossi took it in and seemed to consider it for a long moment before responding. “At one point I wouldn’t have been surprised, but I thought you had both made your choices year ago and moved on. What changed?” 

“I died,” she laughed bitterly at that. “There’s nothing like a tragedy to make someone realize their true feelings.”

He nodded, as if she was confirming something he already suspected, and gave her an appraising look. “Do you love her?”

The question surprised her. Of all the things that he could have asked, that seemed almost beside the point. But telling him at made it real, in a way that nothing else quite had, and there was no point in lying anymore.

“Yes.” It was a painful admission. It was the reason she couldn’t just end it, and the reason that she needed to. And if she trusted anyone to understand that it was Rossi, because they were broken in very similar ways. 

“And does she love you?”

“I think so…She’s certainly made it clear that it isn’t just meaningless sex.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” It was the same question she had been asking herself for months to no avail.

“I don’t know,” she wished she had a better answer. She had hoped that saying it out loud to another person would help, but no startling revelation was forthcoming. “I don’t think that we can go on like this, or at least I know I we shouldn’t, but I don’t know how to stop…does that make me a bad person?”

“Of course not. It makes you human,” he replied, and she was grateful that she couldn’t find anything but understanding in his eyes. “A piece of advice? If you think this is your chance at happiness you should take it. Real happiness is rare, and second chances are even rarer.” She knew he was talking more about Caroline than her and JJ, but he had a point. 

When she left his office she knew what she had to do. She could never ask JJ to pick her because JJ already had something real with Will, and she could never break them up on the off chance she could be happy. Especially not now, when everything in her life felt so unstable, and she didn’t know if she even wanted to stay at the BAU. 

She knew what she needed to do, but she had no idea how to do it.

* * *

Her shrink had told her to mourn her own death, so on the one year anniversary she found herself visiting her grave. She had been somewhat surprised to find out that her mother hadn’t had it removed once she found out Emily was still alive, but the Ambassador was a busy woman so it was possible she hadn’t gotten around to telling someone to deal with it yet.

Standing in a cemetery looking at her own name on a headstone was one of the weirder things she’d ever experienced, but it was oddly comforting. It was a reminder that she had actually died; that the fact that she was still here to look at it meant something, even if it was just that Doyle hadn’t won.

She stood there for a long time, lost in thought, before a familiar voice brought her back to the present.

“I really should have this removed,” her mother said, considering the headstone before them.

“Mother. What are you doing here?” She really didn’t have the energy to deal with her mother today, and this wasn’t the way she had wanted to talk to her for the first time since her death. Not that there was any way she wanted to talk to her about that.

“I could ask you the same thing, Emily,” she replied, and she was right. Visiting her own grave on the anniversary of the day she had staged her death was morbid, even for her. “I got a message from your unit chief, saying you had been asking about your grave, suggesting that I reach out to you, as you can’t be bothered to talk to me yourself.”

She was going to kill Hotch next time she saw him. She understood that he was worried, frankly she was worried about herself too, but to contact her mother? That was a low blow. 

“I’ve been meaning to call you,” she said. “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t a lie. She had been meaning to call her mother for months, but she had no idea what to say. 

“I know we’re not exactly close Emily, but having to find out from your boss that my only child isn’t dead, and then to not hear from you for months? Well, that hurt.” Her mother’s voice was clipped in that way she had when she was trying to maintain composure. Emily knew she should feel bad about it, but all she felt was the bitterness that colored all her interactions with her mother. Even here, at her grave, her mother was trying to keep things professional and collected. God forbid she show any real emotion. At least Emily knew where she had gotten it from.

Emily took a breath, trying to remind herself that her mother had a point: not giving her a call to tell her that she wasn’t actually dead hadn’t been her finest moment. She may not actually like her mother all that much, but she didn’t want to hurt her. 

“You’re right, I really am sorry about that,” she replied, feeling herself deflate, the annoyance she had felt when her mother showed up ebbing away. “I guess I just didn’t know what to say. I’ve been trying so hard to keep my team from hating me for not telling them I was alive that I didn’t want to deal with it from you too.”

“Despite what you seem to think, I’m not angry about that, I’m just glad that you’re alive. You’re my daughter and I love you, even if I don’t understand why you insisted on going back to the Bureau.” 

Emily almost laughed at that. It was so typical of her mother to take a nice moment and make it about whatever her latest agenda was. 

“Well I did fake my own death to protect my team, so I can’t exactly abandon them,” she said, feeling like she was trying to convince herself more than anything. 

“You can do whatever you want. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to prove to me your entire life?” Elizabeth gave her a shrewd look, the kind she gave foreign dignitaries when she was sizing them up, the kind Emily gave unsubs when she was trying to figure out what the best approach to an interrogation was. It was vaguely unnerving to be on the other end of it. “So, what do you think we should do with it? The headstone I mean.”

Emily thought about it for a minute. At one time she would have kept it as a sort of morbid joke, but now the thought of that made her feel too much like she had actually died, which was too close to the truth for comfort, because she was beginning to realize that not all of her had made it out of that warehouse.

“Get rid of it,” she said, her voice hard. “I have enough reminders of what he did to me. I don’t need any more.”

“I’ll have it taken care of,” her mother replied, her voice as carefully emotionless as Emily’s had been.

As much as she hated having this conversation, and her mother’s uncanny ability to make her feel guilty while remaining emotionally distant, it was almost refreshing that it didn’t seem like anything had really changed between them. She spent so much time and energy trying to fix her relationship with the team, with her family, and nothing seemed to change, not really. It would be easier to blame it on them, on their inability to trust her again, but deep down she knew that they weren’t the problem.

No matter how hard she tried she wasn’t the same person as she had been, and trying to pretend to be wouldn’t bring the woman they had loved. But she wasn’t ready to give up and just accept it yet. That would be too much like admitting that she shouldn’t have come back at all. Too close to letting Doyle follow through on his threat to take her team away from her.

* * *

Emily wasn’t used to being summoned, particularly by Garcia, but after a week of being glared at when Garcia thought no one was looking she was expecting something like this. She really should have been expecting it since she had gotten back, because JJ had never been able to keep things from Garcia for all that long, and frankly, six months was impressive. 

“Close the door and sit down,” Garcia told her when she knocked on her office door late in the day on Friday. She was tempted to just skip the inquisition she knew was coming and just go home, but she had rarely seen Garcia so serious so she did as instructed.

“Look, I know what you’re going to say, and -“ she started before Garcia cut her off.

“You don’t get to talk yet, because I have something to say and if I get distracted and don’t say it I’m going to be forced to take drastic measures.”

“Drastic measures?” Emily asked, shutting up quickly under the force of Garcia’s glare.

“Yes, drastic measures. Okay, so back to what I was saying,” she said, and Emily could tell she was stealing herself for confrontation. It would have been endearing if she hadn’t know she deserved it. “I know that you and JJ are dirty little secreting, and that you have been since you got back. And before you ask, no she didn’t tell me, as her best friend it’s my duty to know these things. Also I hacked the security cameras in your building’s garage.”

"My garage? Really?” she asked, and Garcia just gave her a smug look before continuing.

“My point is that you and JJ are doing the nasty and have been for a while now, and while I love you both, as JJ’s best friend it is my job to make sure that she doesn’t get hurt or do anything really stupid, and as such, I need to know what your intentions are,” she said, her tone more serious than Emily could remember it.

“My intentions?”

“Yes, your intentions. Why are you doing this, what are you hoping to get out of it, are you going to irreparably break our oh so lovely blonde friend’s heart, that kind of thing.” Emily could tell that she wasn’t going to let it go, and despite not being a profiler Garcia could spot a lie a mile away, which only left honesty, something she didn’t relish at that moment.

“I’m doing it because I love her, and I think I have for a long time. But don’t worry, I’m not going to break her and Will up. He’s better for her than I could ever be.” She didn’t realize how sad she had let her voice get until Garcia leaned over and pulled her into a hug.

“Oh honey, it can’t be that bad,” Garcia said when she pulled back from the hug. “With the way she looks at you, she loves you just as much. If it’s hurting her you’re worried about, at this point, you’re going to hurt each other no matter what, and waiting around for her to end things isn’t going to help.”

“You really are the goddess of all things knowable and unknowable, aren’t you?” Emily had to give it to her, she was more perceptive than she let on. 

“Of course I am,” Garcia gave her a long look, her eyes getting a little sad. “You know, she would leave him if you asked her to.”

“I know,” she replied, getting up to leave, not wanting to talk about it further. “That’s entirely the problem.”

* * *

The case had been a difficult one, but thankfully short. Hotch had called to tell them that they had gotten a confession from their main suspect while she and JJ had been out hunting down a dead end lead. Mercifully he had told them that they could go straight back to the hotel instead of heading back to the sherif station, because it was already late and no one had slept much in the past four days.

Emily was completely emotionally wrung out. Watching body after body turn up and feeling like she wasn’t doing enough to stop it was always difficult, but seeing herself in the victims was a special kind of torture. She had seen cases like this before, where the victimology was a bit too close for comfort, but this time, digging through the lives of dead women who looked too much like her had made her acutely away that it wasn’t so long ago that it was her face on the board and her life that her team was dissecting. She was glad it was over, because she didn’t know how much longer she would have been able to keep herself together.

They were quiet as JJ drove them back to town. She appreciated the silence, but she could tell by how tightly JJ was gripping the steering wheel that something was bothering her. Wrapped up as she was in her own angst she really didn’t want to talk, but the desire to be a good friend won out.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, breaking the silence that was stretched thin between them.

“Talk about what?” JJ replied, obviously having been startled out of whatever she was thinking about.

“Whatever it is that’s got you strangling the steering wheel.” 

JJ sighed, self consciously loosing her grip, and Emily realized she wasn’t going to respond. The silence returned as they drove the last several miles to the hotel, and she found herself looking forward to sleeping in her crappy hotel bed.  


It wasn’t until they were parked and Emily was moving to get out of the SUV that JJ finally spoke.

“Why won’t you fight for me Emily?” she asked, her soft voice resigned.

The question knocked the wind out of Emily, and she fell back into her seat, all thoughts of sleep gone. This was it then, the ending she had hoped for but didn’t want to actually happen.

“You know, for a while there I thought you actually wanted us to be together,” JJ continued, staring out through the windshield. “You seemed happy, but then you closed yourself off, again. I love you, Emily. And I know you love me too. But I don’t understand why you don’t seem to want this to work.”

Emily wanted to point out the hypocrisy of a happily not quite married woman telling her to work harder at their adulterous relationship. She wanted to get mad, and tell JJ that she wasn’t the one refusing to make a commitment, even if it wasn’t true. But she didn’t have the emotional energy to put up a fight. And besides, a part of her had always known it would come to this. 

“I can’t ask you to choose me over Will. You have something real with him, and I’m not going to ask you to give that up on the off chance that I can make you happy.” 

“What about what I want? Don’t I get a say in this or have you just decided what’s best for me?” JJ snapped back. Emily felt herself rising to meet JJ’s anger. Didn’t she see how hard this year had been for her? That this whole mess between them was only making things worse? 

But as quickly as it rose, her anger dissipated, leaving only a bone deep weariness. She knew she wasn’t being fair to JJ, who, if anything, was in a harder position than she was. Why had nothing ever been easy between them? 

She sighed, weighing her options and realizing that if she wanted to salvage her friendship with JJ she had to let go of the secrets she had held so close since her death.

“I don’t know how to be happy, JJ. Not really. Are you willing to bet your family that I’ll learn how to?” JJ didn’t respond, she just looked at Emily with a profound sadness that told her she had finally realized what Emily had figured out months ago. “I didn’t think so.” 

As she got out of the SUV, JJ stopped her with a hand on her arm and a quiet question. “Who hurt you so badly that you don’t believe you can be happy?”

Emily just shook her head and pulled away, walking away without a word.

It was only much later that night that she answered JJ. She couldn’t sleep, and from the sound of tossing and turning coming from the other bed in their shared hotel room she could tell JJ was awake as well. Maybe it was because of the physical and emotional exhaustion, or maybe it was because she knew that whatever it was they had had was over for good, but she felt like she owed JJ an actual explanation. Or at least as close to one as she herself had. 

She stared at the water stained ceiling and started talking, quietly at first, hoping that JJ actually was asleep.

“When I went undercover, we already knew that I was Doyle’s type, and the plan was for us to get involved. I knew that for it to work, for him to trust me, he had to believe that I was in love with him, and to do that, I had to believe that I was in love with him, even though I wasn’t attracted to him at all. So I forced myself to forget about anyone I’d ever had actual feelings for, right down to the girl I had a crush on in high school, so I could believe I had feelings for him…And the fucked up thing was that it worked. Because afterwards, when I let myself think about my real feelings, I couldn’t tell the difference.”  

She felt the tears start to roll down her face as she talked, and she tried to keep her voice even as as she continued, but she knew JJ could tell she was crying. She never thought she would ever tell this to anyone, but here she was, baring her soul to her coworker in a dingy hotel room in the middle of nowhere Indiana.

“The day Doyle proposed is one of my happiest memories…how fucked up is that? I thought I was over it, but then he came back, and…The thing is, I can’t trust my own feelings anymore, not really, because if I could trick myself into loving Ian Doyle than how do I know if anything I’m feeling is real? You deserve so much better than me Jennifer. You deserve someone who isn’t as broken as I am.”

She couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t crying anymore, and it was the best she could do to not break down completely. But that resolve only lasted as long as it took for JJ to get into bed with her and gather her up into her arms. She let herself go then, sobbing into JJ’s shoulder, mourning the loss of everything Doyle had taken from her.  

* * *

Emily woke up the next morning with JJ still wrapped around her. She lay unmoving for a long moment, just inhaling JJ’s scent, knowing that this was the last time she would ever wake up like this. 

“Hey,” JJ greeted her with a warm smile when she did finally open her eyes.

Emily smiled back. She rolled away, reluctant to leave JJ’s warmth, but knowing she couldn’t stay. She was a bit embarrassed by her breakdown the night before, but she did feel better, more at peace with it all.

JJ propped herself up on her elbow, studying her.

“You do deserve to be happy, Emily, and you’re capable of it, even if you don’t believe it. I’ve seen it, when you let your guard down,” JJ said, and against everything Emily believed her, feeling hope for herself for the first time since her death. “But I can’t wait around for you to figure that out anymore…I’m sorry.”

“I know, and as clichéd as it may sound, I do really want you to be happy, even if it isn’t with me.” And she did. She had known it could never work, not really, she was too damaged for it to be more than it had been. But that didn’t make it any easier to get out of bed and get ready to face the world like her heart wasn’t shattered beyond repair.

* * *

Ever since she and JJ had ended things she knew she wasn’t going to stay at the BAU. Really she had known it even before that, but now it felt like the last thing keeping her there was gone. But it wasn’t until Will had walked into that bank and she had to watch Derek bodily restrain JJ that she knew that leaving was the right thing to do.

JJ was absolutely destroyed by the possibility of losing Will, and Emily knew that her continued presence would only stand in their way. If not now, then someday, and she didn’t want to come between them any more than she already had. If she were being honest with herself, she also didn’t want to stick around and watch JJ being happy married to him. JJ had made her choice, but Emily didn’t want to have to live with it.

She hadn’t expected Clyde’s offer, and two years ago if someone had told her she’d go back to INTERPOL she would have laughed in their face, but she was a different person than she was then. She had been killed and buried and brought back and she had let the one really good thing to ever happen to her slip away.

It wasn’t until she was standing in Rossi’s backyard watching the love of her life marry someone else that she was really okay with it all. She had her chance with JJ, and she’d had her second chance too and she hadn’t been able to take it. But at least now she could go without ever wondering what if. So she left, and if maybe occasionally she looked back and wondered why somethings just weren’t meant to be, she was okay with that too.

* * *

  _I came here a stranger, as a stranger I depart_ — Wilhelm Müller

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is longer than what I usually write, and my first foray into this particular fandom, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated!


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